I met the 99% on Northgate for New Year’s. They were running from a fight they had picked in the bar. One of them, thinking he had made his escape and now manhandling a female companion, got arrested, but not before he squared up to the police. The individual was subdued, efficiently and professionally.

Then another took to yelling at, shoving, pulling and slapping a female police officer, one who was trying to keep everyone at a safe distance (you know, from flailing hippie legs and police officers’ holstered service weapons). But the officer exercised restraint. When she would not be moved to respond to violence in kind, the 99% turned to we looking on and shouted the accusation “successive force!”

Then one looked at me directly, as I stood there with the rest, and he shouted the same. I shook my head deliberately and mouthed “No.” So they came at me, quickly and pouty. From the walk below the deck we stood on, they squealed. One of them had a father in the FBI. He told me this, I guess, that I might be swayed so that, battle won, they could return to slapping females and peace officers.

“Are you in the FBI?” I asked.
“SUCCESSFUL FORCE!!!” he shouted desperately, pointing over one shoulder, a female companion parroting the same over the other.
“Shut the **** up then.” I barked provokingly, drawing him nearer to me and farther from the fracas and his “friend” now abandoned, only squirming under the heavy weight of shame, defeat, and two stoic police officers.

The bartender that had first summoned the police, and run after the offenders, and pointed them out amongst the throng, now turned his attentions to the yipping provacateurs at my feet. He too barked at them, angrily, to get away, to obey. They railed still louder, and louder still when I nodded calmly, approvingly from my perch. Now thoroughly counter-provoked by the frustratingly unprovoked, they surged once more to our feet, clamoring for corroboration.

And then, from behind me, over my shoulder, an anonymous ally interceded. I did not turn to see them as I could only stare in rapt wonderment at the agent and consequence of their intercession… a cold, sudsy faunt of cheap bottled beer streaming across the pate of the sputtering complainant whose eyes were still set wide, now in confusion, even as the foamy dregs flushed their tears of sadness, to be replaced with tears of humiliation, rejection… or maybe just the stinging irritation of residual carbonation.

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